I love to cook, but I've never been to school. Because it's apparently good enough, here's a little diary of some of my culinary adventures, none of which require difficult techniques or fancy equipment.

Friday, December 11, 2009

So there's a project going on over at Examiner.com where we're supposed to try to write articles about New Year's Resolutions. At first I thought: "damn, I too bad I'm not in fitness/health/exercise; I'd be all over that!" Then I realized how many cool ideas there are for (gourmet) food and drink related New Year's resolutions (just in time for me to make some for myself, even). The link in the previous sentence takes you to a central article I wrote connected to all of the others. Take a look if you want cooking and food to be on your New Year's resolution list (resolutions that are easy to stick with!).

Here are the individual articles, to tell you more clearly what's there:

New Year's Food and Drink Resolution #1: Wine of the week. This is a project my brother and I did for months after I bought The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil (a must have for wine enthusiasts or anyone that wants to know more about wine). It was one of the best ideas I've ever had. For a while, it was even more social when we had "Wino Wednesday," in which we got together on Wednesday nights, shared wines (with a purpose of learning about them) and food, and discussed philosophical ideas until late, late, late. Way fun, way cool. I might have to look into doing this again, actually.

New Year's Food and Drink Resolution #3: Food with friends. This also isn't a copycat, particularly when you take my idea of "using" one of your gourmet-skilled friends as a teacher (paid in the food and drinks, of course) and you use it as an excuse to learn and practice your own cooking, which is kind of the goal: let learning to cook be your resolution.

New Year's Food and Drink Resolution #4: Learn to cook. This here is what the real resolution for next year should be -- upping your skills. Everyone knows that chicks only want boyfriends (husbands) will skills. From personal experience, I can tell you that "cooking skills" win a lot of points with the lovely wife. Resolution #3 is a system of accountability and camaraderie to facilitate this resolution.

New Year's Food and Drink Resolution #5: Get out and try new things. This resolution really serves Resolution #4 by keeping you inspired, and it provides lots of great meal opportunities, vacation ideas, and potential dates to go on, not to mention all of the increased knowledge you'll have to impress said date with if you do #5 solo first for a while.

So, get a fitness-based New Year's resolution like everyone else... you'll need it once you start up some or all of these interrelated food-and-drinks-centered ones (all of which could very possibly improve your life immeasurably if you stick with them).